Mahua Moitra Expulsion From Lok Sabha: Are Her Arguments Properly Addressed?
In an unprecedented turn of events, Mahua Moitra, the Trinamool Congress MP from Krishnanagar, West Bengal, has been expelled from Lok Sabha over her alleged involvement in a cash for query incident and sharing her credentials with unauthorized persons. The decision to expel Moitra was taken via a voice vote by the House following an ethics committee report that pleaded her guilty in the cash for query. The committee also recommended her expulsion from the house.
Case Against Mahua
Mahua Moitra shot to fame since she launched belligerent attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of giving preferential treatment to his cronies, especially Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani. However, her rhetorical assertions did not last long as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey levelled a cash-for-query allegation against her.
Dubey argued that Mahua took bribes from a businessman, Darshan Hiranandani, for asking questions in the Lok Sabha against Adani.
“The questions were also often focused on the Adani Group, another business conglomerate that Hiranandani Group was bidding for business against. The entire conspiracy does not end here. In the past few years, a clever facade was crafted when Smt. Mahua Moitra, as opposition leader, vehemently targeted our Honourable Prime Minister and Respected Home Minister, constantly referencing the Adani Group, giving the impression that she was critical of the government, possibly with the intention of seeking cover against her clandestine criminal operation,” said Dubey in a letter.
Dubey also alleged in an affidavit that Moitra shared her parliamentary email credentials with Darshan Hiranandani, and it was he who prepared questions on behalf of Moitra. Dubey presented the statement of Moitra”s estranged partner, Jai Dehadrai, who is a lawyer in the Supreme Court, as testimony.
Moreover, Darshan Hiranandani made a confession of guilt in which he admitted that he made the questions on behalf of Moitra.
“Ms. Moitra drafted a few questions that would have elements to embarrass the government by targeting the Adani group—questions that she could raise in Parliament. She shared with me her email ID as a Member of Parliament so that I could send her information and she could raise the questions in Parliament. I went along with her proposal. She therefore requested that I keep supporting her in her attacks on the Adani group and provided me with her Parliament login and password so that I could post the questions directly on her behalf when required,” said Hiranandani, as per a copy of the affidavit in media reports.
The affidavit further said, “Over a period, my friendship with Ms. Mahua Moitra grew. I also felt that, through her, I would get support in other states ruled by the opposition. Importantly, she also made frequent demands of me and kept asking me for various favors, which I had to fulfill in order to remain in close proximity with her and get her support. The demands that were made and favors that were asked included gifting her expensive luxury items, providing support on renovation of her officially allotted bungalow in Delhi, travel expenses, holidays, etc., apart from providing secretarial and logistical help for her travels within India and to different parts of the world.”
On request of Dubey Loksaba Speaker Om Birla, an ethics committee was appointed to investigate this matter.
What Moitra said about the case
Moitra accused the case of being fabricated, and her political rivals had a personal vendetta against her. Her party, TMC, pointed out that Dubey had not been invited for a testimony. Moitra said the report was a joke being written by the Prime Minister”s Office.
She termed her partner a “jilted ex.”.
“Jai Dehadrai is not some “Supreme Court lawyer” who has done painstaking research on me. He is a jilted ex with an acrimonious personal history with me who wanted to somehow get back at me. If indeed he was witness to all of my corruption, why was he with me during the time, and why did he wait till now to make it public?” said Moitra in a response shared on Twitter.
She argued that businessman Darshan Hiranandani prepared his confession on white paper and did not even use his letterhead.
Who is Mahua Moitra?
Mahua Moitra is a banker by profession and holds a mathematics and economics degree from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She worked in the US with JPMorgan Chase before joining politics. Her first stint as a politician was with Congress, and then she switched her platform to the Trinamool Congress, where she got an assembly ticket in 2016. In 2019, she was elected as an MP from Krishnanagar.
She was a harsh critic of the Narendra Modi government and brought many controversial policies of the government into the limelight.
